In post 1617 my brother Herman payed attention to the old path that connected the monasteries Iviron and Lavra before the dirt road was build, probably just before 1968, when Athos celebrated its 1000th anniversary. The old kalderimi path is almost totally destroyed, only small parts remain, especially near the few bridges that are still in situ.

Together with monk T from Simonopetra monastery we tried to find a few of these remnants of the path, that led over a couple of typical Athos bridges. The first bridge is in a small bay between arsanas of Filotheou and Karakallou. The bay has no name, according to the Howorth pilgrim map.



You have climb down to take a closer look:



No parts of the old path remains here. Near the beach the old walls of some houses are to seen:

The next bridge is in the so called Megálos Velás valley, located not far from Lavra.


A few photo’s of the bridge











I tried to go up to have a closer look at the house, and then a found a part of the old coast path, but the path was overgrown and the house was
inaccesable.


This is as far I could go on the old path, to try to get to the ruined house. Maybe this a new task for the FoMA foothpath group, to clear this part of the old hiking route (although it is only a very short part of the disappeared monopati)?
Wim Voogd, 2-12-2018
Thank you for all your hard work and sharing this.
Between these two beautiful stonebridges and quite close to the first one, there is yet another stone bridge at arsanas of Ag.Artemios from where the original path to Lavra used to cross.